Pirates of the Burning Sea Site - Dev Log

Flying Lab Software Lead Designer Taylor Daynes on how the combat system determines damage to guns and crew

By IGN Staff

Earlier today, a new Dev Log appeared on the official site that may interest would-be developers. Discussing a facet of the combat system, it begins as follows:

Crew Volumes and the Combat System How does that amazing combat system work, you ask?

Well, let's discuss one particular aspect of it. How do we detect shots hitting guns and crewmen? The loss of guns and crewmen during battle was a key factor in determining the outcome of the conflict: as you lose guns, you lose your ability to fight, and as you lose crew your capabilities diminish even further. Clearly, this is a critical feature to get right.

Many other games have been far more abstract. They have simply had a single number for the number of crew on your ship. These ethereal crewmen were neither handling the sails, nor serving the guns. This isn't a bad design choice, because it does make for a simpler game. In these games, the best (and sometimes only) way to injure crewmen was to use grapeshot against their decks. This would kill crewmen, and the overall performance of their ship would degrade: your sailing characteristics would be more sluggish, and all your guns would take longer to reload.

For those not fully familiar with this interesting game, it's an age of sail persistent state title that is unabashedly aimed at gamers with fairly upper-end hardware as well as broadband. - Jonric